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Sunday, 27 December 2009

Another day, different gulls

Can anyone ever have enough of gulls? Yes, you might well say, but for me they are the high point of winter. A day after scanning through the mixed flocks of loafers, bathers and scavengers on the Thames in east London, I am on an expressway near the East River in New York - praying for a traffic jam so that I can scan through the massed ranks of larids on the ice close to the road.

Today is not my day, though, and a remarkably speedy drive from Kennedy Airport to Manhattan results in just snatched glimpses of American Herring and Ring-billed Gulls, plus a few Double-crested Cormorants and a few more Black Brants along the water's edge. All are new 'year birds' for me, but birding proper will have to wait for a couple more days - even if an adult female Peregrine drifting over midtown Manhattan provided a welcome surprise.